More Likely A Day That Will Live In Infamy

Without endorsing every last bit of this Guardian piece (for instance, I don’t think the Lancet estimates of Iraqi dead are at all reliable), it has an amazing example of what passed for commentary on the pro-war side at the beginning of the Iraq invasion (from William Shawcross in The Wall Street Journal):

April 9 – Liberation Day! What a wonderful, magnificent, emotional occasion – one that will live in legend like the fall of the Bastille, V-E Day or the fall of the Berlin Wall. Watching the tearing down of Saddam Hussein’s towering statue in Baghdad was a true Ozymandias moment. All those smart Europeans who ridiculed George Bush and denigrated his idea that there was actually a better future for the Iraqi people – they will now have to think again.

A day that will “live in legend”? Like V-E Day? Did people really talk like that back then? Yes, unfortunately, we all know that some people did, and yet most of those who spoke in such rapturous tones about the invasion go merrily about their business today without giving any hint that they think they went horribly wrong somewhere along the way.